Need for a high cap CC pistol?

[Echo40]

Personally, I'm not one to prepare for a scenario in which the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against me, ergo the whole "carry a double-stack pistol for a 4 on 1 attack" mentality just doesn't make any sense to me.

Sure, I carry a double-stack during cold weather, but not because I think that I'll need it, but simply because I can easily do so with Winter attire, so why not? During warmer weather, I carry a single stack, and fortunately I've never even needed that either.

If folks want to carry a double-stack because it makes them feel more confident, then more power to them, but don't go thinking for a second that it will provide you with an adequate means with which to repel a 4 on 1 assault. Honestly, even if your attackers aren't armed with guns of their own, those are still just plain bad odds.

If you want to be better prepared to defend yourself from an attack, then spend your money on some target ammo and spare magazines/clips/strips/speedloaders, then practice shooting/reloading drills at the range. I guarantee that the experience gained from training will do far more to improve your odds of survival than carrying a whole new gun which holds more ammo.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

All this capacity thing started when the little 9 bubbled it's way into popularity.
Since it is a relatively small cartridge. Everyone wants one that will hold a box of cartridges..........Except me.

 

[BC38]

...If folks want to carry a double-stack because it makes them feel more confident, then more power to them, but don't go thinking for a second that it will provide you with an adequate means with which to repel a 4 on 1 assault. Honestly, even if your attackers aren't armed with guns of their own, those are still just plain bad odds.

If you want to be better prepared to defend yourself from an attack, then spend your money on some target ammo and spare magazines/clips/strips/speedloaders, then practice shooting/reloading drills at the range. I guarantee that the experience gained from training will do far more to improve your odds of survival than carrying a whole new gun which holds more ammo.

Forgive my pointing out a bit of a contradiction in your logic friend, but on the one hand you downplay the benefit of a gun with more ammo, and then in almost the next sentence advise getting spare magazines, speedloaders, speedstrips and practicing reloads.
If your pistol holds more rounds - say 12+1 (doublestack) vs 7+1 (singlestack) or 5/6 (revolver) you don't NEED the extra reloads - or at least not as many of them. That's the point of extra capacity.
What's more I guarantee you that everyone who isn't Jerry Miculek, can put more rounds on target in less time with the 12+1 doublestack than they can with a 7+1 singlestack and a reload.

 

[Echo40]

The extra magazines/etc are namely for the purpose of training, (you don't want to wear out or damage your carry magazines/etc at the range) and the training is primarily to become proficient/confident with what you are already carrying, with the ability to reload quickly under stress merely being a good skill to possess which would undoubtedly come in hand on the off chance in which one needs to do so.

Besides, it never hurts to have a reload or two. I view a spare magazine as more or less the same thing as a spare tire. You don't have it because you think that you'll need it, you have it just in case you happen to need it.

 

[BC38]

...Besides, it never hurts to have a reload or two. I view a spare magazine as more or less the same thing as a spare tire. You don't have it because you think that you'll need it, you have it just in case you happen to need it.

Same philosophy applies to having more rounds in the gun to start with!

 

[delcrossv]

Interesting thread. I don't believe there's any particular right or wrong answer. I carried wheelguns for years. Mostly J frames but occasionally a short barreled N frame. Going into a large city with a notably high crime rate, I felt perfectly safe.

These days I mostly pocket carry a "Cajunized" Rami BD. It satisfies the 3 requirements I've identified:

It's reliable
I'm accurate with it
It's comfortable to carry.

More shots? Yeah, but not an important consideration for me. Anything over 5 is just "gravy".

 

[Smoke]

I often read the need for 14-19 rounds vs. 6 in a revolver but facing 4 armed robbers, one shot seemed to break their resolve -
"According to Nesky, a person was approached by four armed males while in the 14900 block of Health Center Drive in Bowie Tuesday around 5 p.m.

The four, armed suspects demanded property from the person, which was taken. The victim, described as a 38-year-old man, was then told to hand over his car keys. It was after that moment that the victim produced a handgun and shot one of the robbers. After the subject was shot, the suspects fled on foot."
Armed robbery victim takes matters into his own hands, shooting attacker in Maryland | WJLA

Cherry picking this one incident and using it as a typical example is just as intellectually dishonest as when the other side cherry picks the Gramins (Why this cop carries 144 rounds) or the Pete Solis (20 rounds of .40 S&W to stop the bad guy) incidents as typical examples of why you need to carry a Glock 17 and 50 reloads to walk out your door. It's as intellectually dishonest as assuming that anyone who carries a STANDARD capacity magazine is an incompetent marksman (I qualified expert everytime I qualified for G4S) who is going to rely on "Spray and Pray".

I carry the biggest gun I can comfortably conceal. Usually that's a Glock 19, sometimes it's a Glock 43.

My experience informs my choice of carry. I don't think I've ever had a real run-in that wasn't directly related to my job but I would say the majority of those run-ins involved more than one "assailant". I'm not willing to take on two bad guys (ever really) with a 5 shot gun.

The last time I drew my gun at work was right before I retired. I was driving to work and there was some crackhead standing in the middle of Austin Bluffs Parkway swinging a trailer hitch (I found out later). He tried to stop me, I drew and drove around him and called the cops and reported it.

I went to work, did shift change, started my rounds (different businesses around the area), got to my fourth stop and guess who's sitting on the steps. I was required to get out of the truck and I was required to ask him to leave. I dialed the cops, got out of the truck and he came off the steps swinging that trailer hitch (the cops told me that's what it was) and I drew my gun.

You know what happened? He dared me to shoot him. He wasn't intimidated by the fact I was armed In The Least. He took off when he realized I was on the phone with the cops, which is why I always made a point of putting the cops on speaker phone.

He wasn't the first crackhead who took one look at my gun and dared me to shoot him. I'm not even talking about times I drew my gun (three times not counting clearing buildings). Just seeing that I was armed seemed to set people off. Because of that I never assume that just drawing a firearm is going to make the bad guy run.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

The extra magazines/etc are namely for the purpose of training, (you don't want to wear out or damage your carry magazines/etc at the range) and the training is primarily to become proficient/confident with what you are already carrying, with the ability to reload quickly under stress merely being a good skill to possess which would undoubtedly come in hand on the off chance in which one needs to do so.

Besides, it never hurts to have a reload or two. I view a spare magazine as more or less the same thing as a spare tire. You don't have it because you think that you'll need it, you have it just in case you happen to need it.

Wear "em" out????? I been using the same magazines/clips in my pistols for 40 years.......They ain't wore out(plastic ones maybe). Using good magazines/clips for practice and playwon't hurt them.

 

[Buford57]

I think this puts the question to rest.

 

[BB57]

The extra magazines/etc are namely for the purpose of training, (you don't want to wear out or damage your carry magazines/etc at the range) and the training is primarily to become proficient/confident with what you are already carrying, with the ability to reload quickly under stress merely being a good skill to possess which would undoubtedly come in hand on the off chance in which one needs to do so.

Besides, it never hurts to have a reload or two. I view a spare magazine as more or less the same thing as a spare tire. You don't have it because you think that you'll need it, you have it just in case you happen to need it.

Yes and no.

Statistically a tactical reload almost never happens in a civilian self defense shoot, and they they are uncommon in LEO involved shoots (maybe 1 in 4 or 5 officer involved shoots).

A spare magazine also serves an important function in

For a malfunction where "tap, rack, bang" fails, the next step is to drop the magazine in order to help clear the jam and then load a fresh magazine.

On the other hand, if you have a malfunction in an armed citizen self defense shoot, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the whole thing being over before you can clear a malfunction, especially none that progresses beyond "tap rack bang".

I shot practical pistol competition for years but I stopped carrying a spare magazine a long time ago for concealed carry. Instead, I choose to shoot on a regular basis with my carry ammunition and magazine(s) to ensure the pistol, magazine and ammo combination remains 100% reliable.

—-

As for practice, I am not in favor of dropping a carry magazine during practice as damage to the feed lips is the most common cause for a magazine to suddenly stop being reliable.

 

[CouchPotato]

Whenever and wherever possible, I'm carrying or I have a firearm in close proximity. When I conceal carry, I'll also carry a spare magazine.

The statistical chances of needing a firearm, or a weapon of any kind for any particular circumstance, are extremely low. By definition, when we carry we are preparing for "edge case situations." Needing more than a few rounds in a defensive situation is even more unlikely. Needing a larger caliber than 9mm is also very unlikely.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with preparing for edge case situations and when we do, we feel more comfortable and more confident in 100% of situations. Furthermore, it's our Constitutional right to do so.

There are many situations where I'd feel perfectly comfortable with 10 or less rounds, but there are also many situations where I wouldn't.

Both situations where I've had to draw a firearm in self defense required exactly zero rounds fired in order to sucessfully defend myself however I advocate for carrying as many rounds as possible. There's plenty of examples out there of where a single determined attacker simply did not stop attacking even after being hit with a multitude of center-mass shots of 9mm or above.

It's important that we carry what we're comfortable with. If only having six rounds (or whatever) available gives you capacity anxiety, then why carry it? Well, it's better than zero rounds, that's why. Depending on how we're dressed for whatever occasion, it may not be possible to carry something that's larger with higher capacity.

I want to have as many rounds available as possible, especially the event of multiple determined attackers, and I generally dress accordingly. All future planned firearm and accessory purchases will enable me to comfortably carry more ammo, not less.

The points of usually only needing a few rounds in a defensive situation, only covers some situations, not all, and plays into the arguments of the gun grabbers attempts to restrict magazine sizes.

There are two individuals in jail now who both would like to visit my house in order to do harm to me. When released, they're highly likely to do so if they find out where I currently live. For this reason, at my bedside is a .40 handgun loaded with 16+1 and two more 16 round mags along side of it.

The trend of magazine size restrictions in various states is pure nonsense and is completely ridiculous. Such laws only restrict magazine capacity for law abiding citizens and inherently exempts criminals from those restrictions. If the state I lived in passed such laws, I'd simply move.

If magazine sizes above 10 rounds are made illegal, then clothing with pockets must also be made illegal, with minimum federal prison sentences per pocket. People who carry purses and bags, including grocery bags, must also be punished with the most strict prison sentences, because just like clothing with pockets, a bag that can be carried can hold more bullets.

No matter how convoluted the reloading process is with any firearm, reloading can smoothly be achieved with a little practice in a matter of seconds, but definitely puts a law abiding citizen at a disadvantage in a gun fight with a criminal, who doesn't care about laws, especially laws about magazine sizes.

More ammo is better. Just like with having a gun in the first place, it's better to have it and not need it then it is to need it and not have it. For that reason, any manufacturing innovations that enable us to carry more ammo in a concealable package should be celebrated.

Laws that restrict magazine size do a sum total of zero to reduce gun crime.

Even if a would be criminal can only get 10rd magazines, pockets can hold lots of magazines, and a magazine reload can be completed as quickly as 1 second.

Clearly pockets, purses, and bags are the cause of mass shootings. If you believe that, just think of the obesity problems we could solve simply by making spoons and forks illegal.

 

[Puller]

I think more rounds is always better. You never know when you could run up against a hoard of aggressive popcorn throwers in a dark movie theater.

 

[Mister X]

The following quote comes from a member on another forum who was one of the "experts" featured in one of Massad Ayoob's book Amazon.com

"I don't see a lot of corpses with j-frames in their hands. For random violence, it's a wash. I've yet to see any compelling statistical evidence that j-frame carriers are losing at rates higher than those of semi-autos. In the untrained or semi-trained individuals hands they are actually doing pretty danged well because there's no safety to forget to take off, they "feed" the cheap-*** ammo they bought, and the lack of maintenance hasn't bricked it. Remembering that, per my stats, more people lose by pulling a non-functioning gun than lose because they missed, that's kind of a big deal for a large segment of the public. One that's really unlikely to be on PF to read this, mind you, but a large segment none the less.

1) Overall stats are useless because they encompass such a wide variety of situations as to be meaningless.

2) Defense against violent crime can largely be broken down in to three categories: Occupational, Random, Targeted. If you aren't a cop, armored car guard, etc., the first metric is useless to you. If you don't have a crazy ex, aren't dealing drugs, don't owe a seedy biker gang dope money, etc. then the third category is useless to you. What you are concerned with is Random.

3) Random crime very much falls in to that trope of less than 3s, but there are outliers. I kept my own stats solely on cases I could identify as non-criminal actors defending themselves against random crimes. No domestic homicides, no drug dealers defending their turf, no police actions, etc. If I couldn't verify it was a real 'good guy vs bad guy' situation, it was chucked. I ended up with about one hundred cases to pull data from.


Results:
Distances tended to be within double arms length when outside the house.

Shots to resolution was often zero or one. Two or three was reasonably common. More than that was a fairly extreme outlier.

Total shots (what UCR would have) was sometimes higher. This confused some people, but let's say there's a video of the shooting. The bad guy starts to run as the draw stroke is being completed and the good guy fires two misses at the bad guy full sprint across the parking lot. Shots to resolution: Zero. Bad guy was already in flight. Total shots: Two. The two "extra" shots had no effect on the outcome of the fight. If you mag dump but miss every time and the guy is in full flight by shot 3, 3 shots to resolution but much more fired.

People who lost ran out of time before ammo. They got put out of the fight before they could empty their gun, the bad guy was down or in full flight before they emptied their gun, etc.

More shots *generally* equated to more misses. As people move, seek cover, spread out, etc. hit rates go down.

So, from my stats, if random crime is your main concern than 3/3/3 is a pretty solid idea, even if not an exact concrete number.

Entangled fighting occurred in a relatively small percentage of incidents, but those incidents were lost by the defender much more often than non-entangled incidents."

To what do you attribute that?

"Getting disarmed. Getting overwhelmed without getting the gun until the fight effectively. Generally untrained and unpracticed public."

 

[Mister X]

Another post from the same author…

How People Lost Random Encounter Gun Fights

"First off, what this IS NOT: This is not targeted violence, which often looks different. This is not police actions, which often look different. This is regular non-criminals who were approached by armed criminals in an attempt to rob them for the most part, although some were attempted sex crimes and some were thrill murders.

This is also not inclusive of situational awareness fails, etc. The reader is expected to be familiar with the OODA loop, MUC concepts, etc. We all realize we win every fight we don't engage in, and many of these were avoidable…but that's not the point of this thread.

What this IS: Trends I observed across roughly 100 cases of failed self defense by regular citizens faced with irregular circumstances of random targeting for crime. The majority of these were cases I personally worked as lead or assisting detective, with the remainder being cases worked by other detectives I worked with who I could question on the circumstances, review case files, etc. None are from media accounts, 3rd hand accounts, or self-reporting alone. Note these are not in order by percentage, and multiple factors were present in some cases, but these are by far the most common factors in a loss:

1) Presenting a non-functioning weapon. Empty chamber carry, failure to get a thumb safety off, mechanically inoperative gun, or mental inability to pull the trigger. Pulling a gun without the will and ability to pull the trigger got people shot and/or stabbed and/or disarmed in multiple cases. In cases of serial robbers, often when the robbers had never shot any other victim who was compliant.
2) Off body carry. Reaching for off body carry often tipped off the bad guy that non-compliance was coming, got their attention on the defender, and resulted in being shot or trading shots as both parties pulled triggers near simultaneously.
3) Entanglement. Particularly with long guns which otherwise enjoy a *very* favorable win ratio, entanglement often resulted in disarmament or a gun that became non-functional. Entangled defenders were often disarmed, had their gun disabled, or were injured/exhausted until ineffective and the attacker either continued the attack or disengaged and fled.
4) Multiple attackers. Especially when combined with entanglement. Multiple attackers at a distance tended to flee, but still win rates were lower due to some exceptions which I'll touch on more in a bit.

There were other factors that appeared much less frequently, but those are the major 4.


One on one encounters, speed/surprise/violence of attack was nearly 100% effective in either outright killing the bad guy, injuring him to the point of surrender (physical or psychological stops counted), or putting him to flight. Everybody, win or lose, ran out of time before they ran out of ammunition regardless of what they were armed with. One side or the other was down or in flight. Multiple bad guys was harder. Generally they were put to flight once the fighting started, but if one or more were in close proximity and went for the grapple they tended to fight it out until they either won or disarmed the victim and fled with or without shooting/stabbing the victim.
On very rare occasion a crew was professional enough to have an overwatch who shot the defender from ambush while he was engaging the bad guys he saw, but this was always occupational violence (targeting delivery men, armored car guards, etc) and not random in the same sense a street robbery or stranger rape attempt is."

 

[hyena]

"I don't see a lot of corpses with J frames in their hands."

I like that, as a J frame carrier.

 

[Mister X]

Follow up to posts 113 & 114

Just to confirm since I'm occasionally carrying a snub, did only having 5 shots ever result in a negative result? I assume not since you stated that people ran out of time before bullets, but thought I'd ask.

"No. Nobody got hurt or killed due to lack of ammunition, regardless of capacity. Note this included long guns and some were single shot. Targeted violence was different, capacity did come in to play sometimes, but that's one of the reasons I say targeted frequently looks different. Random violence is often a much easier problem to solve when compared to targeted violence by a dedicated attacker/group of attackers. The attackers are often more dedicated to the fight, the goal is often the death of the defender (as opposed to economic gain or sexual gratification), and targeted violence that was not domestic related often involved multiple assailants. Even worse, the defender was often fighting from an ambush situation, distances were longer, the assailant frequently had concealment or cover, and attackers with long guns were much more prevalent. Some folks were dead with empty guns in their hands in those situations, and guns that held a lot more than 5."

 

[tops]

All this capacity thing started when the little 9 bubbled it's way into popularity.
Since it is a relatively small cartridge. Everyone wants one that will hold a box of cartridges..........Except me.

One of my mentors in the 60s carried a Colt .45ACP and the only high capacity we knew of was a 9M Browning. He said 7 was enough in .45 but if you carried a 9M you needed 13. Larry

 

[John Patrick]

Interesting thread. I don't believe there's any particular right or wrong answer. I carried wheelguns for years. Mostly J frames but occasionally a short barreled N frame. Going into a large city with a notably high crime rate, I felt perfectly safe.

These days I mostly pocket carry a "Cajunized" Rami BD. It satisfies the 3 requirements I've identified:

It's reliable
I'm accurate with it
It's comfortable to carry.

More shots? Yeah, but not an important consideration for me. Anything over 5 is just "gravy".

"Anything over 5 is just 'gravy.'

Gotta agree.

I'm a P365X fan, but it's more because of form than capacity. I'll admit that twelve rounds before reload is nice though. No imperative to carry a reload.

On the other hand, throwing a light weight J frame in a pocket (in a pocket holster) is so easy.

 

[Donn]

There are any number of real time shooting vids on You Tube, especially on Correia's Armed Self Protection channel. In practically every one, regardless the number of bad guys, armed or not, once the shooting starts, the bad guys head for the tall & uncut. They might return fire while retreating, but I've never seen one where the BG's pressed the attack. Is that a hard & fast rule? Of course not, but it's evidence worth considering.

 

[S&W Fan]

At the risk of being accused of oversimplification-mice go where the cheese is, never heard anyone complain of having too much ammo, carry whatever you shoot/like best and can conceal.

For the past 44 years I've relied on a 1911 (8 rounds) or 6 shot K frame 99% of the time. Recently picked up a Shield Plus for warm weather carry because I really like how it fits and I shoot it well. Up in the mountains it's either a 686 or 629.